Education | featured news

Parents at a Brooklyn elementary school are furious over a fifth-grade teacher’s bathroom policy that prohibits students from jetting to the john more than three times a week.

Apple on Thursday lifted the veil on its plans to remake the educational landscape in a way that centers on its best-selling tablet computer, the iPad. "Education is deep in Apple's DNA and iPad may be our most exciting education product yet," Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of marketing, said in a statement.

Apple is slated to announce the fruits of its labor on improving the use of technology in education at its special media event on Thursday, January 19. While speculation has so far centered on digital textbooks, sources close to the matter have confirmed to Ars that Apple will announce tools to help create interactive e-books—the “GarageBand for e-books,” so to speak—and expand its current platform to distribute them to iPhone and iPad users.

Some states have introduced education standards requiring teachers to defend the denial of man-made global warming. A national watchdog group says it will start monitoring classrooms.

For decades, the prevailing wisdom in education was that high self-esteem would lead to high achievement. The theory led to an avalanche of daily affirmations, awards ceremonies and attendance certificates — but few, if any, academic gains.

The No Child Left Behind education law offered the promise of improved schools and better prepared students in a competitive world. Yet after a decade on the books, President George W. Bush's most hyped domestic accomplishment has become a symbol to many of federal overreach and Congress' inability to fix something that's clearly flawed.

Seven central Florida teenagers were arrested after authorities said they punched and kicked a 13-year-old until she was unconscious while on a school bus.

UC Davis' embattled chancellor said campus police officers defied her orders when they used pepper spray on peaceful Occupy protesters last week. Chancellor Linda Katehi's statement comes as outrage continued over the incident, which was caught on tape.

Students paid test-takers up to $3,600 to boost scores and their chances of getting into a top college, New York prosecutors said.

In a Long Beach meeting marked by violent disruptions, the California State University Board of Trustees on Wednesday voted narrowly to increase annual tuition by 9%, or $500, for next fall.